What the Click of a Button Can Mean for Patient Access to Medication

“I used the real-time prescription benefit checker and saw that she can be on a different long-acting insulin that would reduce her copay to zero. She would be able to take it the way the doctor prescribed it to her.” When Patel shared this information with her, “immediately, it almost brought my patient to tears.”

Jessel explains that the impact of unaffordable prescription drugs is “even worse because it undermines all our credibility. It makes patients much less likely to trust us when their gut reaction is ‘why would she prescribe this for me?’”

It is “extremely helpful to have this information at the point of care, to decide is there a less expensive alternative, is it better if I send a 90-day prescription versus a 30 day. It’s helpful to see the cost differences between brands and generics,” notes Jessel.

Mellin also shared that Surescripts Real-Time Prescription Benefit has been adopted at a faster pace than any healthcare technology he’s seen in his decades long career. He noted that a recent study of 34 million new electronic prescriptions informed by Surescripts Real-Time Prescription Benefit saw prescription pickup rates that were 3.2 percentage points higher those where it wasn’t used.